166 0BATEBOPODIDJ2. 



trees left by the wood-cutters. I have one nest, however, which 

 is externally formed of green moss with a few dry stalks, and the 

 spiders' webs, instead of being plastered all over the outside, are 

 merely used to bind the nest to the small branches among which 

 it is placed. The lining is of bark- shavings, dry grasses, black 

 fibrous lichens, and a few fine seed-stalks of grasses. The internal 

 diameter of the nest is 2| inches, and it is 1| inches deep. The 

 eggs are usually three in number, of a rosy or purplish white, 

 sprinkled over rather numerously with deep claret or rufescent 

 purple specks and spots. In colours and distribution of spots there 

 is great variation, sometimes the rufous and sometimes the purple 

 spots prevailing ; sometimes the spots are mere specks and freckles, 

 sometimes large and forming blotches ; in some the spots are wide 

 apart, in others they are nearly, and sometimes in places quite, 

 confluent ; while from one nest the eggs were white, with widely 

 dispersed dark purple spots and dull indistinct ones appearing 

 under the shell. In all the spots were more crowded at the larger 

 end." 



Colonel C. H. T. Marshall remarks : — " Numerous nests of this 

 species were found at Murree, agreeing well with Hutton's descrip- 

 tion. They breed in May and June, never above 6000 feet." 



The eggs are rather long ovals. Typically a good deal pointed 

 towards the small end, and more or less pyriform, but at times 

 nearly perfect ovals. They have little or no gloss. The ground- 

 colour varies from white, very faintly tinged with pink, to a 

 delicate pink, and they are profusely speckled, spotted, blotched, 

 or clouded with various shades of red, brownish red, and purple. 

 The markings vary much in character, extent, and intensity of 

 colour. There seem to be two leading types, with, however, almost 

 every possible intermediate variety of markings. The one is thickly 

 speckled over its whole surface with minute dots of reddish purple, 

 no dot much bigger than the point of a pin, and no portion of the 

 ground-colour exceeding - l in diameter free from spots. In these 

 eggs the specklings are most dense, as a rule, throughout a broad 

 irregular zone surrounding the large end, and this zone is thickly 

 underlaid with irregular ill-defined streaky clouds of dull inky 

 purple. In some eggs of this type, the smaller end is comparatively 

 free from specks. In the other type, the surface of the egg is 

 somewhat sparingly, but boldly, blotched and splashed, first with 

 deep umber, chocolate, or purple-brown, and, secondly, with spots 

 and clouds of faint inky purple, recalling not a little the style 

 of markings of the eggs of Rhynchops albicollis. Then there are 

 eggs partly speckly and partly blotched, some in which the markings 

 are all rich red and where no secondary, pale purple clouds are 

 observable, and others again in which all the markings are dull 

 purplish brown. Generally it may be said that the markings have 

 a tendency to form a cap or zone at the large end. 



A nest of three eggs recently obtained from Mussoorie were 

 more richly coloured than any I have yet seen, and were decidedly 

 glossy. The ground-colour is a rich rosy pink, boldly, but sparingly, 

 blotched and spotted with deep maroon, underlaid by clouds and 



